THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



print is quite as interesting, and it is this that trains 

 the eye. 



A schoolgirl wrote me one day that she had seen 

 a hawk carrying a snake in its beak. Now, if she had 

 had a trained eye, she would have seen that the 

 hawk carried the snake in its talons. One of our 

 recent nature writers has made the same mistake 

 in his book. Birds of prey all carry their game in 

 their talons; other birds carry it in their beaks. 



A recent magazine writer errs in the other di- 

 rection when he makes the crow carry in its claws 

 the corn it has pulled up, as the crow is one of the 

 birds that carries everything in its beak. 



Emerson says, "The day does not seem wholly 

 profane in which we have given heed to some natural 

 object." It is such little incidents as I have been 

 relating that redeem many of my own days, and give 

 to my pastimes a touch of something I would not 

 willingly miss from them. 



III. MEN AND ANIMALS 



I 



"While listening to the house wren one morning 

 repeating its song eight or ten times a minute for 

 hours at a stretch, and with an expenditure of force 

 doubtless many times greater, considering its size, 

 than that expended by a man or woman in the act 

 of singing, and knowing, as I did, that the little bird 

 256 



